The Red Rock Hand Carwash Knows How to Hold its Water

Sedona is also cursed by these same red rocks because they've layered themselves beneath the city into a waterproof barrier that defies waste-water disposal. It's God's own drain plug. In homebuilder's terms, this is the town that won't perk.

So imagine what happened when an entrepreneur came over from California a few years ago intending to build a carwash. No problem, said the city, just don't discharge any water into the sewer.

Now the Red Rock Hand Carwash in the middle of town on Highway 89A operates seven days a week by recycling its water. How can it do that, I wondered.

The great thing about this job, promised the editor who hired me way back in the days of whitewall tires, "is that you get to mind other people's business."

"Hi, I'm from Car and Driver, and I'll be minding your business today," I told Larry Skolnik, who, along with his wife, Debra, are Red Rock's new owners. He agreed to pop the system's hood and show me how it works.

But first, a little background. According to Mark Thorsby of the International Carwash Association, 100 percent recycle systems are rare--accounting for less than five percent of all carwashes built each year, he estimates. Other experts say it's more like two percent. A water shortage is the usual recycle motivator.

Carwashes fall into three general categories, Thorsby says. About one-fifth are the conveyorized cleaning factories that pull your car through. Of the rest, about half are completely unfactory--the coin-operated U-do-its--and half are "stationary automatics," the one-car-at-a-time boxes at gas stations where the brushes and sprayers move around your stationary car.

The Red Rock carwash is a variation on the conveyorized theme called "hand wash," in which all of the soapy water, the rinses, and the optional waxes and protectants are automatically applied as the car passes through, although the actual washing is done by humans standing between the sprays wearing mitts of imitation sheepskin on each hand. Some folks think this system is easier on the finish. "You don't have to take off your antenna," Larry says.

The recycle system starts with a long trough that runs down the center of the tunnel. The cars straddle it as they pass through. All of the water--all of the dirt and soap, too--flow into this trough, which drains into a series of settling tanks under the driveway. Heavy particles drop to the bottom, and floating oil and debris are skimmed off the top. The partly cleaned water then flows to the "process" tank.

Larry took me into a room behind the tunnel. It was laced with plumbing and dotted with big red buttons on the faces of various black electrical boxes. Elevated from the floor to about chest level were two pumpkin shapes about three feet in diameter. They glowed faintly in the low light. Nuclear reactors maybe. Larry wasn't sure what went on in the pumpkins, except to say that they were part of the SoBrite system. If I really wanted to get all flow-chart about it, I'd have to call Bryant. He gave me an 800 number.

"Carwashes are my life," Bryant Ruder tells me. He's vice-president of sales for the Reclaim Division of SoBrite Technologies of Eureka, Illinois. The company specializes in water-treatment systems. "Recycle" is a bad word with him. "That's where they pull the water from the collection tank, run it through a spinner separator to take out the heavier grit, and throw it back on the car. Reclaim is where you actually filter the water."

The SoBrite equipment at the Red Rock carwash does two distinctly different jobs. First, the chemistry part: Some water is taken from the process tank, injected with ozone and other oxidants created by ultraviolet light in a black box next to the pumpkins, and then discharged into the trough under the cars. No chemicals are added during this process, just the ultraviolet energy. This "charged" water kills odors and bacteria, and it also sets up attractions among the different particles that get washed off cars--dust, bug parts, oil, etc.--which causes them to stick together. The bigger they are, the more likely they are to drop out in the settling tank, or to get caught in the filters.

The pumpkins are the filters. Ruder says they're filled with glass beads about the size of peppercorns, made from recycled beer and soft-drink bottles. Before any water goes onto a car, it passes through these filters, which remove particles down to 10 microns in size, about 0.0004 inch. The filters are cleaned on an automatic schedule by backwashing, which flushes the accumulated dirt to a special tank, where it settles out. "Gravity always wins," Ruder says. Clear water from the top of the backwash tank flows into the first settling tank at the end of the trough, where it begins its way through the system again.

The settling tanks have to be cleaned every three months. "The stuff looks like mud--red mud, because that's the color of the dust around here," Larry says. "A man goes down in the tanks and passes the mud up. Then we call the waste-disposal service."

Here's a detail that fascinates me. Soap works by enveloping dirt particles and keeping them suspended until they go down the drain. That uses up the soap. But the soap that doesn't hook up with dirt stays on active duty in the water, ready to try again on its next recycle.

Although the Red Rock system is known as "100 percent recycle," water gets away all the time. Some evaporates. About a cupful went out in each of the mirrors of our long-term Chrysler 300M test car. The red Chevy pickup ahead of me hauled away at least five gallons in its open bed. "Five to 15 percent goes out with the cars," an industry expert tells me.

The typical conveyorized wash uses 80 to 100 gallons of water per car, whereas a stationary automatic uses 60 to 80 gallons, according to Mark Thorsby. So saving 85 to 95 percent--everything not hauled out by the cars--adds up to a lot of water.

Such environmental friendliness goes unmentioned at the Red Rock Hand Carwash, however, and apparently at every other carwash that recycles. There's a fear around the industry that customers will think used water damages the finish of their cars. I don't see how it could be worse than the bucket method I use at home, where the dirty sponge keeps bringing grit back into the bucket.

Still, I looked the Chrysler over carefully when Larry's towel guys had finished. All I saw was a clean car.